QOTD, 11/10/15

If the federal government guaranteed auto loans and made them non-dischargeable via bankruptcy, Hyundai Accents would cost a hundred long.
Tamara K. Here

The context of the conversation was the cost of higher education, and, specifically, the financial burden of college loans.

Shortest -- and Best -- Graduation Speech ever

A whole 335 words, and 12 bullet points.

1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible.

2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs.

3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do.

4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended.

Read the whole thing at Thomas Sargent Shortest Graduation Speech - Business Insider

Friedman and Hayek laugh -- or maybe sob uncontrollably

Debate Over Minimum Wage Hike Is Obscured By Myths - Investors.com

Most people who earn the minimum wage or slightly more are the only earners in their households and therefore are poor, right?
And so, if the federal government or state governments raise the minimum wage, that will be a nicely targeted way of helping poor people, right?
Well, no. Wrong on both counts. Most workers earning at or close to the minimum wage are not the sole earners in a household, and most of them are not in poor households.

Minimum Wage jobs are usually held by students or semi-retired folks, often part time.  Minimum Wage is not meant to be a living wage, and if (for example) MacDonalds were to pay all it's employees a "living wage" the Dollar Menu would be replaced by the Sawbuck Menu.

The Question Libertarians Just Can't Answer - Answered!

h/t Daily Pundit

I've seen this movie. I didn't enjoy it.

Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit - The Washington Post

SEE: INSANITY

Ron Paul's Farewell to Congress

Short version: "Fuck alla you fascist assholes."

Transcript: Ron Paul’s farewell address to Congress | WashingtonExaminer.com

UPDATE:  I don't know what happened to the embedded video when I first posted this, added it back in...

QOTD, 11/23/2012

Seen on Shooters Northwest:

Probably would have been more to the point if he had phrased it "tell me how much of what you earn belongs to me", though.

More on those pesky libertarians

As a follow-up to my previous post, "Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind", Professor Reynolds asks for A HIGHER DOSE OF LIBERTARIANISM, PLEASE, in which he tells us that "Damon Root over at Reason takes on the New York Times’ David Brooks’ assertion that the increasing influence of libertarians in the GOP has been bad because Brooks doesn’t think libertarians 'speak in the language of social order.'  Root correctly points out that Brooks seems to have no clue about libertarianism...”

I think David Brooks is a tool and a schmuck. 

"Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind"

Matt Ridley on Libertarians | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

A revoltin' development

The Cost Of Government Regulation: $1.75 Trillion | ZeroHedge

From Bill Buckler, author of The Privateer
The Cost Of "Intervention"
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a small “think tank” in Washington DC which puts out an annual report called: “Ten Thousand Commandments”. The report deals with the regulatory agencies of the US federal government and the cost of the regulations they continually introduce - and enforce. This report would be typical of the regulatory function of pretty well every government in the world.
...
In their Ten Thousand Commandments 2012 report which was released in June, the CEI estimates the cost of US government regulation at $US 1.75 TRILLION. That is just under half (48 percent) of the budget of the federal government. It is almost ten times the total of all corporate taxes collected and almost double the total collected from individual income taxes.

h/t Joe

Libertarians

They want to take over and leave you alone!

Great bumper sticker philosophy.  Too bad that many of the people who would be attracted by it would be repulsed by the corollary:

Libertarians:  We want to take over and make you leave the other guy alone!

even if most Libertarians, or ("small 'l'") libertarians, would do so by moral suasion, and making sure "the other guy" was able to defend himself, as opposed to actually, you know, somehow forcing you to mind your own damned business.

In my previous post I made a joking reference to the fact that the Libertarian Party  is commonly viewed as the Party of Legalization of Drugs, and little else more.  I really do think they should start emphasizing the economic liberty aspects of libertarianism, and let the whole "Declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home" thing wait until they have the ability to do more about it than debate esoteric points of political philosophy...

Speaking of which...

The AnarchAngel : Two libertarians walk into a bar...

Aretae's lovely wife ran out of steam just around the time we (just barely) started talking about compatibilism, utilitarianism, determinism, associationism, the veil of ignorance, the social contract, and the fundamental nature of rights.

See, we barely know Chris and Mel, other than by their blog, although I did enjoy swapping war stories with Chris, and Mrs. Drang talked spinning and other crafty stuff with Mel, at Gun Blogger Rendezvous IV.  I can just imagine him rubbing his hands in anticipation at being able to have that kind of discussion with fresh meat a new victim friend.

Me, my eyes glaze over just reading about it.  So that's another thing: Go ahead and debate those esoteric political philosophical points all you want with each other, but know your audience.

Political Ideology

UPDATE:  Link fixed, sorry!

Chatting (via text message) with Mrs. Drang about the previous post, about the "Which candidate?" quiz, prompted me to look up Jerry Pournelle's essay about the "Pournelle Chart", which Dr. Pournelle calls The Pournelle Political Axes.

Here's the chart as it appears in the essay linked to above:

Wikipedia has a slightly cleaned up, slightly prettier version, at the second link above:

Note that it does not directly address the questions of economic freedom versus control/regulation.  Not sure that's important--what good is economic freedom if you have none, otherwise?

Do read that article.  Dr. Pournell not only discusses the issues with the traditional Left/Right line, but he goes into a bit of the history behind it.

Wikipedia discusses a similar chart at Political compass, which, it cautions, uses European/Commonwealth terminology, which can be different than US terminology.  (I.e., "conservative" in the UK means something different than it means here.)  This chart also has two axes, "Economic" and "Authoritarian."  (The left end of the economic scale calls for collectivization, the right end for a free market, laissez faire approach.  I assume the "authoritarian" axis is self-explanatory.) 

Another chart is the Nolan Chart, which the Libertarian Party displays in it's booth at the State Fair when it is not behind the cow barn smokin' a doobie.*

(It's usually rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, putting "Libertarian" at the top.  Go figure...)

This model, of course, does emphasize economic freedom.

Keep in mind that "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" was originally "Life, Liberty, and Property", based on the writings of John Locke.  As explained in an article at Yahoo!,

By "property," Locke meant MORE than land and goods that could be sold, given away, or even confiscated by the government under certain circumstances. Property also referred to ownership of one's self, which included A RIGHT TO PERSONAL WELL BEING. Jefferson, however, substituted the phrase, "pursuit of happiness," which Locke and others had used to describe FREEDOM OF OPPORTUNITY as well as the duty to help those in want.

As George Mason put it in the Virginia Declaration of Rights

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

No surprise, really, that Mason and Jefferson (and Adams, Franklin, et. al.) were reading the same philosophers...)

(See also the Wikipedia article on Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

As I told Mrs. Drang, Joe Waldron (of the GOAL Alerts I post here) once observed that "a libertarian is a guy who can argue esoteric points of political philosophy all day, but needs velcro to fasten his shoes."  That may have been true at the time, but I suspect the tide is changing.  More and more people are getting fed up with an overly intrusive nosy nanny state.

I can always tell people who get their opinions of the Tea Party issues to them whole by HuffPo, MSNBC, Kos, and/or the DNC--as if there were a difference--by how far off-base their assumptions are.  Middle-aged white guys like me are definitely outnumbered by a younger demographic, which seems to have a higher proportion of X chromosomes than that of us more seasoned types, among other differences.

***

*OK, a cheap shot, but, really, guys, while I agree about the futility of the War on Some Drugs, in the public mind, assyoumeing they've even heard of you, to most people you're the Party of Decriminalizing Pot, and little more. 

Happy Birthday, Freddie

Born this day in 1899, Friedrich August von Hayek!

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
Friedrich August von Hayek

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/friedrich_august_von_haye.html#1DpQ3HSGVgVuvboo.99

Related:

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/friedrich_august_von_haye.html#1DpQ3HSGVgVuvboo.99

Alas, here's evidence of a lesson not learned:

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.Friedrich August von Hayek
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/friedrich_august_von_haye.html#1DpQ3HSGVgVuvboo.99

More: Friedrich A. Hayek: A Centenary Appreciation | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (A few years old, but so what?)

Unintended or intended?

As i read Richard Epstein's Obama’s Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep at the Hoover Institution, I kept asking myself whether this was simply yet another piece of leftist garbage, written with no thought whatsoever to the consequences, or whether it is, indeed, a crap sandwich written with the intention of being yet another nail in the coffin of free enterprise and a free market economy in America.

"Second Round"

Keynes v Hayek, Round One

(Backgrounder.)
And now, Round Two!:

Fight of the Century

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession ended almost two years ago, in the summer of 2009. But we’re all uneasy. Job growth has been disappointing. The recovery seems fragile. Where should we head from here? Is that question even meaningful? Can the government steer the economy or have past attempts helped create the mess we’re still in.

John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek never agreed on the answers to these questions and they still don’t. Let’s listen to the greats. See Keynes and Hayek throwing down in “Fight of the Century”.

Knew it was coming, but didn't know it was out. Thanks, Tam.

"Shout out for Mises!" Heh.

(Double heh: Big Government calls it "The video Paul Krugman refused to pole dance to.")

Hey!

I am Simon Jester is back "on the air"!  I am embarrassed to admit that they have been back to poking Mort The Wart-equivalents in the butt with their pitchfork for over a month now, and I didn't notice.

Wyoh made me the nifty hat in this pic:

No, the hat's not crooked, it's just the way I'm drawn...

QOTD, Recycling Edition

QOTD 06/29/2009

It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.
F.A. Hayek
The Constitution of Liberty
University of Chicago Press, 1960

The stupid! It burns!

Once upon a time I was taking distance learning classes from City University.

Today I am embarrassed to admit it:  Driving along, minding my own business, I spotted a bus with one of those wrap-around ads for City U:

THIS TRAFFIC JAM PROVES THAT KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS THEORY IS TRUE

(Or something close enough to that  to to matter.)

(For anyone who came in late, John Maynard Keynes was a British economist who was about as far left as you could get without being a socialist; he claimed that a government could spend it's way out of a depression, deficits good, debt good, keep writing blank checks, gposterity...  FDR fell for it, among other, more recent, "leaders"...)

I'm trying to figure out what the hell Keynesianism has to do with traffic.

Hayek v Hayek

That is, Salma vs Friedrich.

h/t Cafe Hayek.

An Open Letter...

Cafe Hayek has posted an Open Letter to Two NPR Reporters Reporters re: Their story on Medicare.

Ms. Chana Joffe-Walt and Mr. David Kestenbaum
All Things Considered
National Public Radio

Dear Ms. Joffe-Walt and Mr. Kestenbaum:

Your excellent February 26, 2010, report on the history of how government officials chose the different methods that Medicare has used over the years to determine doctors’ pay is frightening because…

… in your report, Joe Califano, a chief architect of Medicare, admits that the first method of determining doctors’ pay was chosen for political reasons, namely, to buy doctors’ support for Medicare.

… you report that Mr. Califano, LBJ, and Congress were genuinely surprised by the rapid cost increases sparked by this first method.

… you reveal that much of the treatment that Medicare paid for was previously provided free by physicians; that is, Medicare crowded out a sizable chunk of private-sector philanthropy.

… you tell how attempts to change this first method of paying doctors were deeply influenced by skilled lobbyists working on behalf of doctors.

… in describing the development of the method currently used for determining doctors’ pay, you (perhaps without realizing it) reveal that this current method is the product of a comically childish labor-theory-of-value analysis – the same sort of analysis that is at the foundation of Marxian economics.

… your report ends with the admission that, because the current method isn’t working so well, Uncle Sam – 45 years after Medicare was launched – is still searching for a sound method for determining physicians’ pay.

Given this history, what reason is there to suppose that Obamacare is a good idea?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

Granted, with a name like "Cafe Hayek" you gotta know they aren't too crazy about any form of socialism.  (While ISTR that FA Hayek admitted that some form of governmental "safety net" might be desirable, I don't think he meant that to include "Cradle to grave Nanny Statism.")